Abstract
Over the past two decades, the global proliferation of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) has transformed digital youth culture, particularly across Southeast Asia where participatory fan communities wield significant cultural and socio-political agency. This study conducts a comprehensive mixed-methods content analysis of online fan engagements across digital platforms (primarily X, formerly Twitter, and TikTok) to investigate how transnational K-pop fandoms construct collective identity and mobilize socio-cultural solidarity in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Examining a curated corpus of 4,800 multimodal fan artifacts and textual posts generated between 2021 and 2023, we delineate the discursive mechanisms through which transcultural affection transitions into organized civic action and mutual aid. The findings reveal three predominant thematic dimensions: affective community-building through shared emotional resonance, transnational disaster relief and socio-political advocacy framing, and vernacularized cultural translation. We argue that Southeast Asian K-pop fandoms operate as networked affective counterpublics that simultaneously subvert localized socio-political marginalization and cultivate resilient transcultural solidarities. By illuminating the intersection of platform capitalism, youth participatory culture, and transcultural identity formation, this article contributes novel empirical insights to the sociological understanding of digital globalization and civic engagement in the Global South.
